The proposed research will determine if prenatal ethanol exposure has detrimental effects on the development of the central nervous system. An animal model will be employed which will allow experimental control of ethanol administration and of potentially confounding variables such as nutrition, environment, age and heredity. The overall bjectives of this project are to evaluate neuropathological alterations as a result of: 1) the concentration of ethanol administered during gestation nd 2) the duration, as well as timing, of the prenatal ethanol exposure. Alterations to the CNS as a result of the various experimental conditions will be evaluated by several quantitative histological analyses: 1) quantitative light microscopy, autoradiography and Golgi analysis of prenatally-formed cerebellar Purkinge and hippocampal pyramidal cells; 2) quantitative light microscopy and autoradiography of postnatally-formed granule cells and 3) electron microscopic analysis of synaptogenesis.